Type Daily newspaper Owner(s) Kotak Mahindra Bank Publisher Business Standard Ltd | Format Broadsheet Founder(s) ABP Group Founded 26 March 1975 | |
Business Standard is an Indian English-language daily newspaper published by Business Standard Ltd (BSL) in two languages, English and Hindi. Founded in 1975, the newspaper primarily covers India and international business, and financial news and issues. The main English-language edition comes from 12 regional centres, New Delhi, Kolkata, Bangalore, Coimbatore, Chennai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chandigarh, Pune, Lucknow, Raipur, Bhubaneswar, and Kochi—and reaches readers in over 1,000 towns and cities across India.
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Personnel
T. N. Ninan was editor from 1993 to 2009, when he took up the editorship of The Economic Times. In January 2010, Ninan became chairman and editorial director of BSL and was succeeded as editor of Business Standard by Dr Sanjaya Baru. He was the media advisor to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. Veteran journalist and editor Ashok K Bhattacharya took charge of the paper after Baru quit to join a UK based think tank in 2011. The paper is India's second largest business daily and employs more than 200 business journalists, including Nitin Sethi and Shyamal Majumdar.
Business Standard has regular columnists like, Bimal Jalan, former governor of the Reserve Bank of India; Subir Gokarn former Deputy Governor of Reserve Bank of India; Shankar Acharya, former chief economic advisor to the Government of India; Deepak Lal, professor of economics, UCLA; Suman Bery, director-general, National Council of Applied Economic Research; Abheek Barua, chief economist of HDFC Bank; Nitin Desai, former chief economic advisor and former under-secretary general at the United Nations; Surjit Bhalla, chairman of OXUS; Arvind Subramanian, professor at the Peterson Institute for International Economics; M. Govinda Rao, director of National Institute of Public Finance and Policy; AV Rajwade, foreign exchange consultant; and Arvind Singhal, chairman, Technopak Advisors.
Distribution and format
Business Standard sells 217,000 copies daily (English and Hindi included).
ACNielsen's survey of the Upper middle class and Rich Market in India places Business Standard next to The Economic Times in total readership.
The paper has pioneered the ranking of the wealthiest Indians (the Billionaire Club) and provides an auto-mobile magazine as a free monthly supplement.
In 2006, BSL began to produce a Sunday edition that is now published in four centres.
The Hindi edition was launched in February 2008 from seven centres stretching from Mumbai in the west, running across the Hindi Belt, and to Kolkata in the east.
BSL also publishes various periodicals, including BS Motoring, Indian Management and the Asian Management Review.
Electronic
The newspaper's website allows visitors to access the Business Standard e-paper, with a choice of editions. The Business Standard website receives 11.5 million page views and has 2 million unique users per month, the highest for any "stand alone" newspaper website in India.
In January 2010, it launched SmartInvestor, an information-cum-trading website for those interested in stock market (The website appears to be in beta phase 6 years after its launch as can be seen on its homepage).
As of June 2016, Business Standard has become first Indian newspaper with high subscription to limit access to its articles. It has also started blocking access to users who use Adblocker tool on similar lines as to what Times of India, does for its online articles. The 'Opinion' pieces which are basically editorials are now locked for open access and can be seen as a locked key symbol on the webpage. These articles are now accessible only using a Business Standard monthly subsciption , which is available as a standalone subscription or in conjunction with WSJ where users get discounted access to WSJ. The details of this deal between two news websites are not publicly known.